The man froze for a moment, took the item, and stood there staring at Ning Yi'an.
"Please pay," Ning Yi'an snapped out of her pleasant daydream, realizing she had accidentally made a mistake.
The man suddenly grinned, his smile stretching ear to ear.
"Meat..." He abruptly reached out and grabbed Ning Yi'an's arm.
Ning Yi'an was terrified. She now understood her mistake—the rulebook clearly stated, "Do not hand goods to customers before payment." But her instincts had momentarily overridden her memory of the rule.
"Help, save me!" Ning Yi'an turned to look at the senior employee, who cursed under his breath as he approached.
"Rule-breakers deserve death." Despite his grumbling, he pulled out a knife and slashed down, severing the customer's hand. The detached hand still clung tightly to Ning Yi'an's arm, leaving her face ghostly pale.
"Pay up..." Before the senior employee could finish, the door in front of them slammed shut with a loud "Bang!"
Panicked, he raised the knife and began knocking, then pounding on the door. Yet, the flimsy wooden door might as well have been forged from eternal ice—it remained completely unharmed.
Ning Yi'an stood dumbfounded, watching everything unfold. The senior employee suddenly stopped and glanced back at her, his eyes filled with resentment.
According to the boss's rules, failing to collect payment meant a wage deduction! A wage deduction!
The other players had encountered minor issues too, but they had mostly completed their tasks. The only ones who failed were Ning Yi'an and another player from the K Kingdom—a brainless black man named Hanks. The customer he served was so horrifying that Hanks simply threw the goods in their face, naturally receiving no payment. The customer even threatened to file a complaint.
In the K Kingdom's livestream, domestic viewers fell silent while international audiences burst into laughter.
"Look at our country's participants—they follow the rules without question. Now look at the K Kingdom."
"Truly the self-proclaimed world's greatest nation, even their mistakes are uniquely creative."
"That woman still thinks she can cozy up to Fang Zhiyi, huh?"
"Hahaha, hopeless. Absolutely hopeless."
The K Kingdom's higher-ups were livid. Despite paying protection fees and putting on a polite front, these two had still messed up! They even suspected Fang Zhiyi had conspired with the supernatural entities to set them up.
Fortunately, when Fang Zhiyi learned of the incident that evening, he didn’t press the matter. He simply informed the two supernatural couriers assigned to train the newcomers that the losses would be deducted from the two interns' wages.
"But boss, don’t they have no wages?" the store manager asked.
Fang Zhiyi shot him a sidelong glance. "So what if they don’t? Can’t they work extra to make up for it?"
"Oh~!" The supernatural employees had an epiphany.
And so, in the days that followed, Ning Yi'an and the dim-witted Hanks endured far more torment than the others. Players from other kingdoms, once they grasped the rules, resigned themselves to being workhorses. Compared to losing their lives, being exploited wasn’t so bad—some had been exploited even before being chosen for this game. The only difference was the location.
Ning Yi'an and Hanks, however, were paired together. They were assigned the longest delivery routes—any distance deemed too far by others fell to them. And due to their poor performance, their rations were reduced. While other players occasionally enjoyed instant noodles with meat, the two were stuck with plain boiled noodles.
Finally, Hanks snapped. He stood up abruptly and flipped the small table in front of him. "NO! I am a noble lord! How dare you treat me like this? Aren’t you afraid of offending the K Kingdom?" Before becoming a player, he had been a lowly thug who lucked his way through one game. The K Kingdom then "protected" him—meaning they provided shelter, food, and women. For a man who thought only with his lower half, this was paradise. The K Kingdom officials found him easy to maintain, so they kept him around.
But today, he couldn’t take it anymore. How dare these people treat him like this? The aroma of instant noodles from others' meals pushed him over the edge. He lunged to snatch a bowl.
Cheng Xiang instinctively glanced at Fang Zhiyi, who was reviewing accounts with the store manager. Fang Zhiyi merely narrowed his eyes at Hanks before resuming his conversation.
Cheng Xiang understood—he had fully grasped Fang Zhiyi’s character by now.
So he hugged his noodles and stepped aside.
Hanks tussled with the others, knocking over several bowls before finally seizing one. He didn’t notice the owner was from the X Kingdom, a nation long at odds with the K Kingdom. The moment he looked up, a fist the size of a sandbag smashed into his face.
"Damn it! You dare steal from me? Are the rest of you dead? Just letting this trash run wild?"
Once someone struck the first blow, others joined in. These players, though slightly better off than the K Kingdom duo, had been simmering with resentment from endless drudgery. And now a black brute had the audacity to intimidate them? Knowing billions were watching, some cursed and dove into the fray.
Ning Yi'an was petrified. She rushed toward Fang Zhiyi.
"Zhiyi, do something! Hanks is going to get beaten to death!" She stared at Fang Zhiyi, who was flipping through the ledger, her mind racing with calculations.
"Mm." Fang Zhiyi didn’t even look up. His indifference reassured the other players, who focused wholeheartedly on pummeling Hanks. This guy had always lorded his K Kingdom status over them, hurling insults and even harassing female players in private.
"Protest! The Xia Kingdom isn’t instructing Fang Zhiyi to stop them?"
"Protest my ass."
"You paid protection fees for Fang Zhiyi to shield you from supernatural threats, not to mediate player brawls."
"Oh? Fair point."
"Damn, I think we just found a loophole."
"Shh."
Ning Yi'an anxiously watched as Hanks disappeared under the mob, then turned back to Fang Zhiyi. "Zhiyi..."
Before she could speak, Fang Zhiyi abruptly closed the ledger and looked over. "Alright, that’s enough." He wouldn’t let Hanks die—at least not here.
The enraged players didn’t hear him, but the supernatural staff did. They rushed forward, slapping players aside one by one to break up the fight.
Fang Zhiyi walked over to Hanks, who was barely conscious. The man was surprisingly tough—beaten to a pulp yet still hanging on.
"Not dead yet?"
Hanks' eyes were slits as he weakly nodded, mumbling incoherently.
"Old Crook!" A supernatural employee with a crooked neck scurried over. "Boss."
"Keep an eye on him this afternoon. If he’s alive, he works." With that, Fang Zhiyi turned and left.
The room fell silent.
Cheng Xiang could already imagine the flood of online comments—Fang Zhiyi’s reputation would now include "tyrannical capitalist."
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
nto another world, I bought a slave for the first time, never expecting the silver wolf girl to be so cute... Lin Feng: I know it's cold, but you don't have to sneak into my bed! Yuna: Just sharing body warmth, if you dare do anything naughty, I'll definitely...
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
iemie, male, Race: Moon. Hobby: Collecting anomalies. At first, he thought he possessed two systems: the Crimson Rainbow Moon and the Clear Cold Frost Moon. One day, he discovered that he himself could also become a system for others, holding the chessboard of fate. The Eighth Epoch, also known as the Eternal Moon Epoch. Humans, witches, elves, bloodline descendants, specters, demons, and spirits together compose a new history. Walking the path on behalf of the moon, before he knew it, Chen Miemie's footsteps were followed by all manner of strange and wondrous anomalies. As time passed, many titles circulated about him—The King in Yellow, Lord of Anomalies, Heart of the Eternal Moon, and more. "Me? I'm just a traveler who enjoys collecting interesting creatures," Chen Miemie said.
